Quicksilver (11 page)

“What now?” Milo asked. “Do you want me to take you home?”

Chivalry was not dead, just totally out of its depth. I sighed. “Milo, you don’t have to do this. No matter what Sebastian says, I can look after myself.”

“Hey!” He sounded stung. “I may be a jock, but I’m not stupid. Even if I thought you needed a bodyguard, I wouldn’t hang around just because some guy I met yesterday told me to.”

“Then why are you doing it?” I rounded on him. “I’m not exactly a sparkly ball of fun at the moment, as you’ve probably noticed. I haven’t even been that nice to you—” Oh, crap, my throat had closed up and my eyes were prickling. I had to start walking again, fast, so he wouldn’t see.

“Yeah, I’d noticed,” he said, matching my pace. “But I kind of like you anyway.”

“You
are
a masochist.”

“Not really. It’s not like you’ve been nasty, just uptight. And kind of hostile sometimes, but I don’t blame you. If I’d been through the kind of stuff you have, I’d probably be in a padded room somewhere—”

“Don’t,” I said sharply.

“What?” He frowned at me. “I’m not flattering you. I mean it.” “No. I mean, don’t joke about that stuff. Straitjackets and padded rooms and—” I closed my eyes, seeing Alison’s white, strained face in my mind. “Just don’t, okay?”

“Okay.” Milo sounded subdued. “Sorry.” We walked another block in silence, and then he said, “What I’m trying to say is, you’re so…” He made a vague gesture. “I don’t even know. Just different. But in a good way. I’m trying to figure out how you do it.”

“Do what?” I asked warily. He’d said
in a good way,
so I wasn’t ready to hit the panic button yet. But I wasn’t sure I liked where this was heading.

“How you just throw yourself into things and
deal
with them. Like that night on the bus. I’d barely tuned in to what was going on when,
bam
, you jumped up there and grabbed the wheel.” He huffed a laugh. “It was like all the rest of us were stuck in one of those slow-motion dreams, and you were the only one who was awake. Like it had never even occurred to you to be scared.”

“I was scared,” I protested, but he cut me off.

“I know you were, afterward. But right then? You were like the perfect athlete. Totally focused.”

“Only because I didn’t want to die,” I said. “And as soon as it was over, I panicked and ran off. You’re the one who stayed and made sure the driver was okay.”

Milo gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Yeah, but you had to show me CPR first, and the rest was nothing special. I mean, I couldn’t have done anything else.”

“Sure you could,” I pointed out. “You just didn’t.”

He sighed. “Okay, I get it. You don’t want to be a hero. I’m not trying to be one either. But my point is, if there’s danger involved…” He gave me a sidelong look. “I think the two of us make a pretty good team.”

And with that, I finally understood what Milo was offering. This wasn’t about pity or duty or morbid curiosity; it wasn’t because I’d made some special effort to charm or impress him. He simply liked being around me, and wanted to be friends. A slow warmth spread through me, loosening the knot in my chest. “Together, we fight crime?”

“Something like that.” He nudged my shoulder. “Why do you think I started working out? All that stuff about going into phys ed was just the cover story. Really I wanted to look good in the super-suit.”

I threw my head back and laughed, the first genuine laugh I’d had in days. And despite the worries still skulking at the fringes of my mind, it felt good.

“Okay, Robin,” I said. “Let’s hunt down the Batmobile and go home.”

0 1 0 1 0 0

“I’m home!” I yelled as I came in the door, then stopped as I realized Mom was in the living room, barely three meters from me. She was standing at the front window with Crackers tucked under her arm, watching Milo as he jogged away.

“Who’s that boy, honey?” she asked.

“Milo,” I said. “You know, from work. He lives around here, so we got off the bus together.”

“He’s not bad looking,” she mused. “For an Asian.”

Oh, wow. And she was a pretty nice mom, for a racist. “He’s Korean,” I said wearily, hanging Dad’s coat back on its hook in the closet. “And he’s just good-looking period, okay?” As soon as the words left my mouth I cursed myself. The last thing I needed was my mom thinking I had a crush on Milo Hwang.

“I didn’t mean it like that. You know what I mean, honey—”

“Don’t explain, Mom. It doesn’t help.”

Mom didn’t answer. She was silent so long that I turned—and saw tears in her eyes.

“I know you’re unhappy, Niki,” she said, letting Crackers go as he began to squirm and whine. “I know you think we’re wrong about everything right now. But we’re only trying to keep you safe. And a year isn’t so long to wait, is it?”

Oh, no. I did not want to talk about the makerspace. Not after that depressing incident at the science museum, and with so much else on my mind. And now that Milo was gone, the laughter we’d shared seemed to have happened a thousand years ago and a billion miles away. “I already told you, I get it. It’s fine.” I kicked off my shoes and headed down the corridor to my room.

She followed me. “Sweetheart, please. I don’t want this to come between us.”

I stopped in the doorway, one hand on the frame. “Mom,” I said with all the patience I could muster, “there’s nothing to talk about. Really.”

“I know you,” she persisted. “Do you think I can’t tell when you’re upset? If we just sit down together, I know we can work this out—”

I shut the door in her face.

In the stillness that followed, the only sound was the catch of my mother’s breath. Then the floor creaked, and in a few rapid footsteps she was gone.

I slumped against the wall, pinching the bridge of my nose. Stupid, to think I could hide anything from her. She’d taught me everything I knew about reading people; of course she knew how to read me.

But there was nothing Mom could do to help me right now, and there was no way I could convince her that my being upset wasn’t her fault. Not without telling her about Sebastian and the Vague Text Message of Doom, anyway—but if I did that, she and Dad would panic and move the whole family to Inuvik.

Which meant the only way to solve the problem was to solve the problem, literally. To find the threat to my safety and eliminate it, before it eliminated me.

I only wished I knew how.

0 1 0 1 0 1

That night my parents and I small-talked our way through dinner without anybody bringing up what had happened. But Mom kept giving me pained looks and Dad’s jokes were a little too hearty and in the end, I couldn’t take it anymore and excused myself without even waiting for dessert. I spent the evening in the basement upgrading my Dad’s old PC and was in the process of rebooting when I got a text from Milo.

–Have you seen this? Wonder how long it’s going to stay up…

He’d included a link to a website, so I checked it out. The title read, in too-large orange letters:

DISCOVER THE TRUTH

And below it were a series of links to articles with titles like “9/11 Conspiracy”, “Cell Phone Mind Control”, and “CBC Radio — BEWARE!!!”

I was frowning at the page, wondering if Milo had sent me the wrong address, when I noticed the final link:

MERIDIAN—Canada’s Dark Secret

For one frozen second my brain refused to process what I was seeing. I stared at the screen, the letters blurring and refocusing before my eyes. Then, with dreamlike slowness, I reached out and clicked.

DID YOU KNOW?

For twenty years the people of Ontario have been unaware of the terrifying experiments being performed every day on them and their families. The truth about the top secret laboratory buried deep within the rock of the Canadian Shield and its covert military-political agenda has been hidden by government collusion and corruption at the highest level. Because of the many mysterious deaths and disappearances ignored by the so-called Canadian “justice” system, the military’s deliberate cover-up of incriminating evidence, and our health “care” network’s conspiracy to stigmatize and hospitalize those who know and dare to speak the truth, the average Canadian remains completely unaware of their danger. But now thanks to the testimony of a brave survivor known as S., the facts can and will BE REVEALED!!!

The article continued for several more paragraphs, getting more rambling and disjointed as it went on. The quasi-journalistic style vanished halfway through, replaced by a first-person account of the writer’s abduction and torture at the hands of Meridian scientists. They had implanted a tracking chip in his arm and taken him to a place with locked doors and no windows, where they performed brainwashing and mind-control experiments on him. They had injected him with hallucinogenic drugs, put a helmet on his head that made him feel as though he were floating in space, and sent him to be interrogated by men in grey uniforms who claimed to be visitors from another galaxy…

I shoved back my chair so hard it nearly tipped over. The room spun around me, my stomach churning with it.

But Milo was still texting:

–Sounds pretty crazy. Maybe that’s why they haven’t shut it down.

I didn’t reply. I was too busy taking slow, shuddering breaths, willing the fury inside me to subside.

I knew he hadn’t meant to upset me, much less make me angry. He’d been trying to help, in his own misguided way. But right now, with those words glowing coldly in front of me, I wanted to snatch the phone out of my lap and hurl it through the computer screen. Not just for my sake but for Alison’s too.

But I had to say something to Milo, or he’d start to worry. I gave myself five seconds to mutter all the swear words I could think of, and then I picked up my phone again.

–And you wanted me to see this? Why?

–I thought maybe we should get in touch with this guy. See what else he knows.

–Why would we do that?

There was a long pause. Then Milo replied:

–Because it’s Meridian that’s after you. That’s the danger Sebastian was talking about, right?

That was when I knew I had passed beyond fear and anger into some kind of macabre hysteria. Because the first idea that leaped into my mind after Milo said that was to e-mail the address on the contact page and suggest an article called “How Meridian Reads All Your Text Messages, OMG!!!”

I suspected Milo wasn’t in the mood for black humor, though, and the website owner would probably appreciate it even less. I had to go back to deep breathing for a while before I felt calm enough to reply.

I’m not sure yet,
I began, only to erase the words and start over. I was tired of lies and evasions: I’d spent a lifetime pretending, and sometimes I hardly knew what the truth was anymore.

I hope not,
I tried again, but that wasn’t right either. So finally, I just gave up and typed:

–Yes.

INTERLUDE: Asynchronicity

(A transmission technique in which timing signals between communicating devices originate within the data stream, and not from a shared timing mechanism)

(2.1)

I’d been alone in this place for what seemed like forever. There was a crust of dried blood down the front of my clothes, my eyes were puffy and bruised, and the bridge of my nose throbbed with every heartbeat. I felt like I’d been torn to pieces and put back together wrong, and I hated it.

Not that it made any difference how I felt. I’d cried out for help, even begged for it. I’d yelled and screamed and pounded the walls. When all else failed, I’d sat in a corner and sobbed myself hoarse. No one answered.

Maybe this was one of those psychological experiments. Put a scared teenage girl in a half-lit maze of vacant rooms and dead-end corridors, all by herself, and see how long it takes for her to crack. How many hours, days, weeks of isolation before she forgets how to be human and turns into a wild animal, filthy and savage? And after that, how much longer before she stops eating, curls up in a corner, and simply waits to die?

Apparently I was going to find out. I wanted to vomit with the sheer terror of it, but I’d thrown up what was left in my stomach hours ago.

And I still didn’t know where I was or how I’d got here. There were no signs on the walls, no posters or pictures, not a single word in any language. What I’d taken for blacked-out windows had turned out to be monitor screens, and the only doors that looked as though they might lead somewhere were sealed tight. If I hadn’t found a box full of food and medical supplies in one of the rooms and a few tools scattered among the others, I’d have thought I was the only person ever to set foot in this place.

I was slumped on a sofa in the abandoned lounge, wondering what would happen if I smashed one of the screens and whether I had enough willpower left to do it, when I heard a noise. Only a soft, distant click—but to me it was shocking as a gunshot. Not just because it was the first sound I’d heard in this place that I hadn’t made myself, but because I knew instinctively what it meant. It was the sound of a door opening, and somebody coming out of it.

Coming for me.

My lungs constricted, and my heart burst into a gallop. I reached for the best weapon I had, blood-crusted fingers clenched around the grip. Then I sidled out the door and went hunting.